The Deployment of Tracking Technology and Health Data Privacy during COVID-19 in Malaysia: Learning from the European Union

Siti Nur Farah Atiqah Salleh, Nazura Abdul Manap, Mohamad Rizal Abd Rahman

Abstract


Tracking technology is being deployed in Malaysia to trace and track close contacts of those infected by COVID-19. In 2020, Malaysia introduced a tracking technology known as MySejahtera. It needs to be downloaded by mobile users for the purpose of tracking information regarding COVID-19 status. Contact tracking technology efforts to access personal health information have raised privacy concerns in Malaysia. This article aims to legally analyse the protection of health data privacy with the application of tracking technology in Malaysia by looking into the Personal Data Protection Act 2010 and the European Union law on data protection. We employed qualitative fundamental legal research and conducted library-based research to analyse data from acts, journals and legal documents. This research found that health data privacy and data protection law in Malaysia is still limited, especially during COVID-19, but there is room for improvement for us to develop better health data privacy protection by learning from the European Union data protection law.


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References


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